Chris Wallace's much-awaited "Fox News Sunday" interview with conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh began exactly as one might have expected with the guest stating right from the start:

I'm really, really worried. We've never seen this kind of radical leadership at such a high level of power in the -- in the country. I believe that the economy is under siege, is being destroyed. Anybody with any economic literacy would not do one thing this administration's done to try to revitalize the private sector. They're destroying it. And I have to think that it may be on purpose, because this is just outrageous, what is happening -- a denial of liberty, an attack on freedom.  

And that was just the beginning.

From there, Wallace and Limbaugh discussed healthcare reform, Afghanistan, Fox News, the NFL, painkillers, Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, and the future of the Republican Party (videos embedded below the fold in three parts with full transcript): 

As NewsBusters reported Friday, conservative talk radio host will be appearing on "Fox News Sunday":

Host Chris Wallace traveled to Palm Beach, Florida to record the interview with Limbaugh today.

List of air times, by city, for the program on Fox broadcast stations at various times on Sunday morning.

For those champing at the bit, here's a brief sneak preview including Limbaugh claiming that if ObamaCare passes, "It's gonna be the biggest snatch of freedom and liberty that has yet occurred in this country" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Breitbart TV):

Every time the White House has a new enemy, left-wing Web-based media outlets take up the cause to defend the Obama administration.

Earlier this year when CNBC personalities criticized the Obama administration, the Huffington Post and other components of the left-wing noise machine watched every word said on the financial network - an effort that has since petered out. The Huffington Post also asked readers to supply reports to undermine the credibility of the tea party protests that were critical of the Obama administration.

So it should come as no surprise that the Huffington Post is making a call for all hands on deck to aid the White House with its latest feud with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Huffington Post now wants to know who gives money to the Chamber of Commerce.

Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino on Sunday compared last week's attempt by the White House to exclude Fox News from of a pool interview to Hugo Chavez shutting down television stations in Venezuela.

As NewsBuster Jeff Poor reported Thursday, the Obama administration earlier in the day tried to shut Fox News out of an interview with pay czar Kenneth Feinberg that was to be part of a pool that the cable network would always be involved in.

On "Fox News Sunday," when the panel discussion turned to this subject, Perino really went after the White House for what she called conduct "unbecoming" and an impediment to our efforts to "help emerging democracies get journalists and government officials to talk to one another" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

With each passing day, more and more media members are taking shots at the Obama administration's strategy of attacking Fox News.

On Sunday, one of the best observations yet came from Marisa Guthrie of Broadcasting & Cable magazine: "[Obama] can talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but he can't talk to Chris Wallace."

Such was stated on CNN's "Reliable Sources" after host Howard Kurtz played a video of Rahm Emanuel saying just a few minutes earlier that Fox isn't a news organization because it has a perspective (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

On Friday’s The O’Reilly Factor on FNC, as host Bill O’Reilly and Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace discussed recent comedy directed at President Obama and the First Lady – including a re-dubbed clip of Sesame Street’s Big Bird grilling Michelle Obama from the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien – Wallace opined that he hopes that there would be more such comedy and that the Obama’s should be treated by comedians like "regular public figures and not as something heaven sent."

He also lambasted the "idiocy" he saw on CNN as the Situation Room recently fact-checked a Saturday Night Live skit that took jabs at President Obama. Wallace: "I mean, here, the idiocy of CNN doing a fact check on Saturday Night Live's send up of Barack Obama, the fact is that is what comedians should do. They should make fun of the people in power."

Later in the show, O’Reilly brought aboard FNC’s Greg Gutfeld -- host of Redeye -- and Juliet Huddy to talk about the "dumbest things of the week," and Gutfeld presented his choice of the CNN fact-check, pointing out CNN’s double standard in its treatment of conservatives: "But they never did this when Will Ferrell went out and did Bush or when Tina Fey did Palin. They never analyzed when Republicans were parodied, but somehow when Barack Obama is parodied, they're shocked. They're incredulous. It's amazing to me."

"These guys [the Obama administration], everything is personal...They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington."

So amazingly said Fox News's Chris Wallace Friday evening.

Appearing on "The O'Reilly Factor," Wallace was rather outspoken about the relationship the Obama administration have with media, and their utter contempt for Fox News (video embedded below the fold):

It's “a badge of honor” that Fox News Sunday is “the only place you won't see Barack Obama on Sunday,” host Chris Wallace proudly proclaimed during a Friday morning radio interview, DCRTV.com reported. Wallace's remark aired on the “Grandy & Andy Morning Show” on Washington, DC's WMAL in response to Andy Parks proposing: “Are you wearing the fact that the President won't be on with you on Sunday as a badge of honor?” (Audio: MP3 clip, 11 seconds)

President Obama recorded interviews Friday afternoon with four of the five Sunday interview shows, all but Fox News Sunday: ABC's This Week, CBS's Face the Nation, CNN's State of the Union and NBC's Meet the Press -- plus Univision. Though Fox News Sunday re-runs on the Fox News Channel, it's Fox's only news program and, unlike ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC, Fox did not air Obama's address last week to a joint session of Congress.

On the August 30 Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace seemed to pick up on Clay Waters' NewsBusters item, earlier posted at TimesWatch, pointing out the blatant double standard between the New York Times obituary for conservative Republican Senator Jesse Helms and that of liberal Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy.

Near the end of Sunday's show, Wallace read from the first paragraph from each obituary, with the Kennedy version tagging the liberal Senator as "a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew acclaim and tragedy in near equal measure, and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate."

By contrast, the Helms version omitted such positive causes as his legislative fight against the tyranny of communism, and instead portrayed his Senate career in a negative light, referring to him as the "Senator with the courtly manner and mossy drawl, who turned his hard-edged conservatism against civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the August 30, Fox News Sunday:

For the second time in less than 48 hours, NPR's Juan Williams accused the press of not doing their job in properly reporting the deeds and doings of America's new President Barack Obama.

Having accused the news media of "kowtowing to the Obama administration" during Friday's "Special Report" on FNC, Williams went even further on Sunday's "Fox News Sunday" (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

[W]hat really, you know, strikes me is the celebrity nature of the treatment, the coverage of him as a celebrity versus the policy-maker...So you know, the problem here is he's not being treated as a politician. The press is not being sufficiently adversarial, which is its role, to hold him accountable.

What follows is an embedded video of this entire extremely candid discusion of the press's abdication of journalistic integrity along with a transcript:

On Friday's Special Report with Bret Baier, FNC correspondent Jennifer Griffin informed viewers that the Obama administration has once again snubbed the British government, as the administration transferred a group of detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the British protectorate of Bermuda without first consulting the British government as protocol requires. Substitute anchor Chris Wallace raised the issue:

Let's talk about the Bermuda part of the story because Bermuda is a British protectorate. We supposedly have a special relationship with the U.K., but we didn't talk to them, we didn't inform them about our deal to put the Uighurs there.

Griffin described the administration's faux pas as "stunning":

While network evening news broadcasts were covering for Joe Biden's swine flu gaffe, Fox News's Chris Wallace called the Vice President's advise that folks avoid getting on airplanes or riding subways "a serious mistake" and "reckless" leading the "Fox News Sunday" host to ask, "Is he nuts?"

Appearing on WOR radio's "Steve Malzberg Show" Thursday, Wallace also discussed how "exquisitely sensitive to anything that's negative, any criticism" President Obama is, adding how the recent attacks of Tea Party attendees and Fox News commentators "doesn't strike me as very presidential."

Wallace also said Obama's press conference Wednesday night wasn't "very newsy" lacking both good questions and good answers, and later took the President to task for claiming the information we received from interrogated terrorists that led us to thwart a string of second attacks on our nation could have been gotten other ways.

Highlights below the fold (14-minute audio available here): 

If former President George W. Bush said 500 million Americans are losing their jobs each month, do you think media would report it?

Probably every hour on the hour until all 300 million Americans had heard about it, right?

Well, during a press conference on an undetermined date, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.) -- you know, the second in line for presidential succession right behind the vice president!!! -- said, "Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs."

Amazingly, she's made this same comment at least twice in the past month -- in front of cameras, mind you!!! -- without creating a media firestorm: (video embedded below the fold):

Chris Wallace interviewed Barack Obama Tuesday and asked the new president about unflattering comments he's made in the past concerning the Fox News Channel.

Obama's answer was rather telling:

I think it's fair to say that I don't always get my most favorable coverage on Fox, but I think that's part of how democracy is supposed to work. You know, we're not supposed to all be in lock step here..

Doesn't that suggest everybody other than Fox IS in lock step as far as Obama is concerned?

Watch the embedded video below the fold and decide for yourself (partial transcript included, h/t TVNewser):

The New York Times posted on its website Wednesday political writer Matt Bai's long profile of Barack Obama, which will be featured in the next edition of the Times Sunday Magazine.

Near the end of the 8,800-word piece, in which Bai talked to Obama on his campaign plane, the Democrat dropped a backhanded tribute to Fox News, which by his lights is not only frustrating him in the polls, but is part of a wider apparatus "designed to perpetuate" the country's "cultural schism." Obama even identified New York Times reading as a reliable signifier of effete liberalsm.

Not that it counts for much but who are the most influential political media figures? It's an interesting question, one that for the most part is hardly a provable assertion. How can one measure influence, after all?

You probably can't but you can at least measure how famous (or infamous) a pundit is. New York Magazine attempted to do just that by creating an index that looks at a given commentator's mentions in Google, blogs, newspapers/magazines, TV shows and then computes a "popularity score" based on the rankings for each category.

The top figure in the survey? Former Bush top aide Karl Rove with a score of 67.79. He's followed very closely by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh with 67.35.

"A forceful advocate for families and women" is often left-wing code for a politician who strongly supports abortion rights and opposes any restriction on abortion.

It's also how Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace characterized Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) as she sat down shortly after 12:30 p.m. EDT today to discuss Sen. Hillary Clinton's speech this evening and the role of Clinton supporters, particularly women, in making or breaking Democratic Party unity heading into the general election.

Boxer has a solid 100% approval rating from NARAL Pro Choice America and voted in recent years 30 out of 31 times with liberal feminist group NOW.

To be fair to Wallace, his designation of Boxer as an advocate for women and families followed immediately after colleague Jon Scott noted that August 26 marks the 88th anniversary of ratification of the 19th Amendment which secured in the U.S. Constitution a woman's right to vote.

All the same, Wallace could just as warmly welcomed and thanked Boxer for sitting down for a chat without parroting a left-wing euphemisms for the liberal feminist agenda.

According to Variety, Chris Wallace, anchor of "Fox News Sunday," differentiated Fox News's coverage of the '08 election and MSNBC's while speaking to reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour. From the article:

"I think MSNBC's coverage went so far over the line that it lost all credibility," Wallace told reporters Monday at the Television Critics Assn. press tour.

Wallace accused MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann of inappropriately mixing anchor and opinion-making duties, and said Fox News drew a distinction between its reporters and opinion-minded hosts.

"There's a reason why Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity won't be anchoring the election night or the conventions," he said during the sesh at the BevHilton hotel.

In the years since he began working at FNC as host of its "Fox News Sunday" program, Chris Wallace has come to realize he was wrong for earlier thinking that the elite media are politically neutral.

"When I was in the mainstream media, when I was working at NBC and ABC [...] I thought we were fair and balanced. But since coming to Fox four and a half years ago, I have come to see things a little differently. And I, in fact, do believe there is a bias in the mainstream media and that is something I was only able to understand when I was outside of it," Wallace said in an interview with a Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts newspaper.

Even if you don't believe Fox is objective, you should be glad it's out there, Wallace added, if only for pluralism reasons:

Now that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan has written a tell-all book about the Bush administration, he's being lauded with so much praise from the usual liberal media suspects that it must be making MSNBC's Keith Olbermann a tad jealous.

This makes Chris Wallace's interview Thursday with WOR radio's Steve Malzberg even more timely, for the "Fox News Sunday" host showed his colleagues what the term "journalism" really means by going after both of these press darlings.

First, Wallace discussed a key question he'd like to ask McClellan that's been completely absent as media applaud the former press secretary's claims (17 minute audio available here, relevant section at minute 6:00):